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Sharia ( ; ) is an Arabic word meaning ‘way’ or
‘path’. In Arabic, the collocation ‘Šarīʿat Allāh’ (God’s Law) is
traditionally used not only by Muslims, but also Christians and
Jews, sometimes translating expressions such as Torat
Elōhīm [תורת אלוהים] or ‘ho nómos toû theoû' (ὁ νόμος τοῦ
θεοῦ) '’. Yet in modern English it often refers to an Islamic
concept, the wide body of Islamicreligious law . Used thus, it refers to the
legal framework within which the public and private aspects of life
are regulated for those living in a legal system based on Islamic
principles of jurisprudence and for
Muslims living outside the domain.
Sharia deals with many aspects of day-to-day life,
including politics,
economics, banking, business, contracts,
family, sexuality, hygiene, and social
issues.

Etymology

The term Sharia itself derives from the verb "shara'a" (
), which according to Abdul Mannan Omar's "Dictionary of the Holy
Qur'an" connects to the idea of "system of divine law; way of belief and practice".Sharia
was a Tribal Law that governed 7th Century Arabs.

The definition of Shari’a could be traced from the verbal Arabic
noun “Shari’a” that appears in the Qur’an only once at 45:18.
Moreover, its derivative form appears three times at 42:13, 42:21,
and 5:51 verses. According to the modern definition, Shari’a is the
comprehensive body of Islamic laws that should regulate the public
and private aspects of the lives of the Muslims. Shari’a is not a
single code of laws; rather, it consists of four sources that legal
experts refer to. The first two sources are the Qur’an and the
Sunna, and the other two complementary sources are consensus (ijma)
and analogy (qiyas). Moreover, some schools of thought accept other
additional sources as secondary sources where the first four
primary sources allow.

Legal scholar L. Ali Khan claims that "the concept of sharia has
been thoroughly confused in legal and common literature. For some
Muslims, sharia consists of the Qur'an
and Sunnah. For others, it also includes classical fiqh. Most encyclopedias define sharia as law based
upon the Qur'an, the Sunnah, and classical fiqh derived from consensus
(ijma) and analogy (qiyas). This definition of sharia lumps together the
revealed with the unrevealed. This blending of sources has created
a muddled assumption that scholarly interpretations are as sacred
and beyond revision as are the Qur'an and the Sunnah. The Qur'an
and the Sunnah constitute the immutable Basic Code, which should be
kept separate from ever-evolving interpretive law (fiqh). This
analytical separation between the Basic Code and fiqh is necessary
to" dissipate confusion around the term Sharia.

Definitions and descriptions

Sharia has been defined as

"Muslim or Islamic law, both civil and criminal justice as well
as regulating individual conduct both personal and moral. The
custom-based body of law based on the Koran and the religion of
Islam. Because, by definition, Muslim states are theocracies,
religious texts are law, the latter distinguished by Islam and
Muslims in their application, as Sharia or Sharia law."

"a long, diverse, complicated intellectual tradition," rather
than a "well-defined set of specific rules and regulations that can
be easily applied to life situations," —Hunt Janin and Andre
Kahlmeyer

"a shared opinion of the [Islamic] community, based on a
literature that is extensive, but not necessarily coherent or
authorized by any single body," —Knut S. Vikor

Mainstream Islam distinguishes between fiqh (deep
understanding, discernment), which refers to the inferences drawn
by scholars, and sharia, which refers to the principles
that lie behind the fiqh. Scholars hope that fiqh
(jurisprudence) and sharia (law) are in harmony in any
given case, but they cannot be sure.

The primary sources of Islamic law are the Qur'an and Sunnah. Certain Sharia laws are regarded as divinely
ordained, concrete, and timeless for all relevant situations. It
also has laws derived from principles established over time by
Islamic lawyers.

Traditional Sunni Muslims also add the consensus (ijma) of
Muhammad's companions (sahaba) and Islamic jurists (ulema) on certain issues, and drawing analogy
from the essence of divine principles and preceding rulings (qiyas). In situations
where no concrete rules exist under the sources, law scholars use
qiyas — various forms of reasoning, including by analogy.
The consensus of the community or people, public interest, and
others are also accepted as secondary sources where the first four
primary sources allow.

Shi'a Muslims reject this approach. They strongly reject analogy
(qiyas) as an easy way to innovations (bid'ah), and also reject consensus
(ijma) as having any particular value in its own. During
the period that the Sunni scholars developed those two tools, the
Shi'a Imams were alive, and
Shi'a view them as an extension of the Sunnah, so they view
themselves as only deriving their laws (fiqh) from the
Qur'an and Sunnah. A recurring theme in Shi'a jurisprudence is
logic (mantiq), something most
Shi'a believe they mention, employ and value to a higher degree
than most Sunnis do. They do not view logic as a third source for
laws, rather a way to see if the derived work is compatible with
the Qur'an and Sunnah.

In Imami-Shi'i law, the sources of law (usul al-fiqh) are
the Qur'an, anecdotes of Muhammad's practices and those of The Twelve Imams, and the intellect
('aql). The practices called
Sharia today, however, also have roots in local customs
(urf).

Classic Islamic law

The formative period of fiqh stretches
back to the time of the early Muslim communities. In this period,
jurists were more concerned with pragmatic issues of authority and
teaching than with theory. Progress in theory happened with the
coming of the early Muslim jurist Muhammad ibn Idris
ash-Shafi`i (767-820), who laid down the basic principles of
Islamic jurisprudence in his book Al-Risala. The book details the four
roots of law (Qur'an, Sunnah, ijma, and qiyas)
while specifying that the primary Islamic texts (the Qur'an and the
hadith) be understood according to
objective rules of interpretation derived from careful study of the
Arabic language.

A number of important legal concepts and institutions were
developed by Islamic jurists during the classical period of Islam,
known as the Islamic Golden Age,
dated from the 7th to 13th centuries.

Origins

According to Muslims, Sharia Law is founded on the teachings of
Allah and the acts and sayings of Muhammad as found in the Qur'an and the Sunnah.
However, sharia was not fully developed at the time of Muhammad's
death, but rather it evolved around the Muslim community or
Ummah through which it would serve.

When sharia began its formation in the deserts of Arabia about 1,400 years ago, the time
Islam was born, a sense of community did not exist. Life in the
desert was nomadic and tribal, thus the only factor that tied people together
into various tribes was through common ancestry. However, the
nature of Islam challenged that ideology and brought all those who
professed their submission to Islam into the Ummah. Additionally,
Islam was not just a religion but a way of
life. Laws had to be instilled so the doctrines of sharia took
root. All who are Muslim are judged by sharia – regardless of the
location or the culture.

Sharia was guided through its development by lifestyles of the
tribes in which was initially
absorbed into Islam. Thus, through the understandings of the tribe,
Islamic law would be a law of the community – for the community by
the community – even if initially proposed by an individual "for
they could not form part of the tribal law unless and until they
were generally accepted as such." Additionally, Noel James Coulson,
Lecturer in Islamic law of the University of London, states that "to
the tribe as a whole belonged the power to determine the standards
by which its members should live. But here the tribe is conceived
not merely as the group of its present representatives but as a
historical entity embracing past, present, and future generations."
So, while "each and every law must be rooted in either the Qur'an
or the Sunnah," without contradiction, tribal life brought about a
sense of participation. Such participation is further reinforced by
Muhammad who stated, "My community will never agree in
error".

After the death of Muhammad, sharia continued to undergo
fundamental changes, beginning with the reigns of caliphsAbu Bakr (632–34) and
Umar (634–44) in which many decision making
matters were brought to the attention of Muhammad's closest
comrades for consultation. In AD 662, during the reign of Muawiya b. Abu
Sufyan ibn Harb, life ceased to be nomadic, and undertook an
urban transformation that created matters not originally covered by
Islamic law. Every change of Islamic society has played an active
role in developing sharia, which branches out into Fiqh and Qanun respectively.

Comparisons with common law

The methodology of legal precedent and reasoning by analogy
(qiyas) used in Islamic law was similar to that of the
common law legal system. According to Justice Gamal Moursi Badr,
Islamic law is like common law in that it "is not a written law"
and the "provisions of Islamic law are to be sought first and
foremost in the teachings of the authoritative jurists" (ulema), hence Islamic law may "be called a
lawyer's law if common law is a judge's law."

English common law

Since the publication of legal scholar John Makdisi's The
Islamic Origins of the Common Law in the North Carolina Law Review in
1999, there has been controversy over whether English common law was inspired by Islamic law.
It has
been suggested by several scholars such as Professor John Makdisi,
Jamila Hussain and Lawrence Rosen that several fundamental English
common law institutions may have been derived or adapted from
similar legal institutions in Islamic law and jurisprudence, and
introduced to England after the
Norman conquest of
England by the Normans, who conquered
and inherited the Islamic legal administration of the Emirate of Sicily (see Arab-Norman culture), and "through the
close connection between the Norman kingdoms of Roger II in Sicily — ruling over a
conquered Islamic administration — and Henry II in England", as well as by
Crusaders during the Crusades. The
connection with Norman law in Normandy may be real, but it should be remembered
that common law owes a great deal to Anglo-Saxon traditions and forms, and in its
current form represents an interplay between the two systems.

According to Makdisi, the "royal English contract protected by the action of debt is identified with the Islamic Aqd, the
English assize of novel
disseisin is identified with the Islamic Istihqaq, and
the English jury is identified with the Islamic
Lafif" in classical Maliki jurisprudence. The Islamic
Hawala institution also influenced
the development of the agency
institution in English common law. Other English legal institutions
such as "the scholastic method, the
license to teach,"
the "law schools known as Inns of Court in England and Madrasas in Islam" may have also originated
from Islamic law. These influences have led Makdisi to suggest that
Islamic law may have laid the foundations for "the common law as an
integrated whole".

The Waqf in Islamic law, which
developed during the 7th-9th centuries, bears a notable resemblance
to the trusts in the English
trust law. For example, every
Waqf was required to have a waqif (founder),
mutawillis (trustee), qadi
(judge) and beneficiaries. Under both a Waqf and a trust,
"property is reserved, and its usufruct
appropriated, for the benefit of specific individuals, or for a
general charitable purpose;
the corpus becomes inalienable; estates for life in favor of successive
beneficiaries cannot be created" and "without regard to the law of
inheritance or the rights of the heirs;
and continuity is secured by the successive appointment of trustees
or mutawillis." The trust law developed in England at the
time of the Crusades, during the 12th and 13th centuries, was
introduced by Crusaders who may have been influenced by the
Waqf institutions they came across in the Middle East. Dr. Paul Brand also notes parallels between
the Waqf and the trusts used to establish Merton
College by Walter de
Merton, who had connections with the Knights Templar. Brand also points
out, however, that the Knights Templar were primarily concerned
with fighting the Muslims rather than learning from them, making it
less likely that they had knowledge of Muslim legal institutions.
The introduction of the trust, or "use" was primarily motivated by
the need to avoid medieval inheritance
taxes. By transferring legal title to a third party, there was
no need to pay feudal dues on the death of
the father. In those times, it was common for an underage child to
lose many of his rights to his feudal overlord if he succeeded
before he came of age.

The precursor to the English jury trial was the Lafiftrial in classical Maliki jurisprudence,
which was developed between the 8th and 11th centuries in North Africa and Islamic Sicily, and
shares a number of similarities with the later jury trials in
English common law. Like the English jury, the Islamic
Lafif was a body of twelve members drawn from the neighbourhood and sworn to tell the truth, who
were bound to give a unanimous verdict,
about matters that "...they had personally seen or heard, binding
on the judge, to settle the truth concerning facts in a case,
between ordinary people, and obtained as of right by the plaintiff." The only characteristic of the English
jury that the Islamic Lafif lacked was the "judicial
writ directing the jury to be summoned and
directing the bailiff to hear its
recognition." According to Professor John Makdisi, "no other
institution in any legal institution studied to date shares all of
these characteristics with the English jury." It is thus likely
that the concept of the Lafif may have been introduced to
England by the Normans and then evolved into the modern English
jury. However, the hearing of trials before a body of citizens may
have existed in courts before the Norman conquest.

The precursor to the English assize of novel disseisin was the
Islamic Istihqaq, an action "for the recovery of usurped
land", in contrast to the previous Roman
law, which "emphasized possession in resolving such disputes." The
"assize of novel disseisin broke with this tradition and emphasized
ownership, as is found in the Islamic law
of Istihqaq." Islamic law also introduced the notion of
allowing an accused suspect or defendant to have an agent or lawyer, known as a wakil,
handle his/her defense. This was in contrast to early English
common law, which "used lawyers to prosecute but the accused were
left to handle their defense themselves." The English Parliament did not allow those
accused of treason the right to retain
lawyers until 1695, and for those accused of other felonies until 1836.

Islamic jurists formulated early contract laws that introduced
formal rationality, legal rationality, legal logic (see
Logic in Islamic
philosophy) and legal reasoning in the use of contracts.
Islamic jurists also introduced the concepts of recission (Iqalah), frustration of purpose (istihalah
al-tanfidh or "impossibility of performance"), Act of God (Afat Samawiyah or
"Misfortune from Heaven") and force
majeure in the law of contracts. However, recission,
frustration and other core concepts in the law of contract are
relatively recent introductions into the Law of England, dating
back to the Victorian period. Early
case law indicates that it was impossible to rescind a contract for
frustration even where performance became impossible.

Law of the United States

While
Sharia often contradicts the principles laid down by the
Constitution of the United
States, similarities between Islamic law and the common
law of the United States
have also been noted, particularly in regards to Constitutional law. According to
Asifa Quraishi, the methods used in the judicial interpretation of the
Constitution are similar to that of the Qur'an, including the
methods of "plain meaning literalism,
historical understanding "originalism,"
and reference to underlying purpose and spirit." Sameer S. Vohra
says the United States
Constitution is similar to the Qur'an in that the Constitution
is "the supreme law of the land and the basis from which the laws
of the legislature originate." Vohra
further notes that the legislature is similar to the Sunnah in that the "legislature takes the framework
of the Constitution and makes directives that involve the specific
day-to-day situations of its citizens." He also writes that the
judicial decision-making process is similar to the qiyas
and ijma methods, in that judicial decision-making is "a
means by which the law is applied to individual disputes," that
"words of the Constitution or of statutes do
not specifically address all the possible situations to which they
may apply," and that, "at times, it requires the judiciary to
either use the consensus of previous
decisions or reason by analogy to find the
correct principle to resolve the dispute."

Azizah Y. al-Hibri argues that American constitutional law may have
possibly borrowed certain concepts from Islamic constitutional law.
al-Hibri compares the American constitution to the Qur'an, Sunnah
and Constitution of Medina,
such as the establishment of a federal government, the declaration of
freedom of religion, the
abolishment of guilt by
association, the right to privacy, and
matters such as common defense and
peacemaking. al-Hibri notes that while
it is uncertain whether or not the American Founding Fathers had access to the
Constitution of Medina, it is certain that they had access to the
Qur'an (which protects some of the rights mentioned in the Fourth
Amendment to the United States Constitution), that Thomas Jefferson was familiar with Orientalist writings on Islam (including those
of Volney)
in addition to owning a copy of the Qur'an, that Jefferson spoke of
avoiding the mistakes of previous civilizations, and that there
were AfricanAmerican Muslim slaves from an
Islamic legal background. However, Thomas Jefferson was not
involved at all in the Constitutional drafting, as he was the
United States Minister to France from 1785 to 1789.

The earliest known lawsuits may also date
back to Islamic law. A hadith tradition reports that the Caliph
Uthman ibn Affan (580-656)
attempted to sue a Jewish subject for recovery
of a suit of armour, but his case was unsuccessful due to a lack of
competent witnesses. The concept of a
lawsuit was also described in the Ethics of the Physician
by Ishaq bin Ali al-Rahwi (854–931) of al-Raha, Syria, as part of
an early medical peer review
process, where the notes of a practicing Islamic physician were reviewed
by peers and he/she could be sued by a maltreated patient if the
reviews were negative.

The earliest known prohibition
of illegal drugs occurred under
Islamic law, which prohibited the use of Hashish, a preparation of cannabis, as a recreational drug. Classical jurists
in medieval Islamic jurisprudence, however, accepted the use of the
Hashish drug for medicinal and therapeutic
purposes, and agreed that its "medical use, even if it leads to
mental derangement,
remains exempt" from punishment. In the 14th century, the Islamic
jurist Az-Zarkashi spoke of "the permissibility of its use for
medical purposes if it is established that it is beneficial."
According to Mary Lynn Mathre, with "this legal distinction between
the intoxicant and the medical
uses of cannabis, medieval Muslim theologians
were far ahead of present-day American law."

While some see the Islamic concept of Istihsan as being equivalent to the concept of
equity in English law, others see it as being equivalent to the
"reasoned distinction of precedent" in American law, in which case
Istihsan may be referred to as the "reasoned distinction
of qiyas (reasoning by analogy)".

Comparisons with civil law

One of the institutions developed by classical Islamic jurists that
influenced civil law was the Hawala, an early informal value transfer
system, which is mentioned in texts of Islamic jurisprudence as
early as the 8th century. Hawala itself later influenced the
development of the Aval in French civil law and the Avallo in
Italian law. The "European commenda"
limited partnerships (Islamic
Qirad) used in civil law as well as
the civil law conception of res judicata may also have
origins in Islamic law.

The transfer of debt, which was not
permissible under Roman law but is practiced in modern civil law,
may also have origins in Islamic law. The concept of an agency was also an "institution unknown to
Roman law", where it was not possible for an individual to
"conclude a binding contract on behalf of another as his agent."
The concept of an agency was introduced by Islamic jurists, and
thus the civil law conception of agency may also have origins in
Islamic law.

International law

The first treatise on international
law (Siyar in Arabic) was the Introduction to the
Law of Nations written at the end of the 8th century by
Muhammad al-Shaybani (d. 804),
an Islamic jurist of the Hanafi school, eight centuries before
Hugo Grotius wrote the first European
treatise on the subject. Al-Shaybani wrote a second more advanced
treatise on the subject, and other jurists soon followed with a
number of other multi-volume treatises written on international law
during the Islamic Golden Age. They dealt with both public international law as well as
private international law.

After Sultanal-Kamil
defeated the Franks during the Crusades,
Oliverus Scholasticus praised the Islamic laws of war, commenting
on how al-Kamil supplied the defeated Frankish army with
food:

The Islamic legal principles of international law were largely
based on Qur'an and the Sunnah of Muhammad, who gave various
injunctions to his forces and adopted practices toward the conduct
of war. The most important of these were summarized by Muhammad's
successor and close companion, Abu Bakr, in the form of ten rules
for the Muslim army:

Islamic law also introduced "two fundamental principles to the
West, on which were to later stand the future structure of law:
equity and good faith", which was a
precursor to the concept of pacta sunt servanda in civil law
and international law. Islamic law also "introduced it to international relations, making
possible the systematic development of conventional law, which
became a partial substitute for custom."

Islamic law also made "major contributions" to international
admiralty law, departing from the
previous Roman and Byzantine maritime
laws in several ways. These included Muslim sailors being "paid a
fixed wage "in advance" with an understanding
that they would owe money in the event of desertion or malfeasance, in keeping with Islamic
conventions" in which contracts should specify "a known fee for a
known duration", in contrast to Roman and Byzantine sailors who
were "stakeholders in a maritime venture, in as much as captain and
crew, with few exceptions, were paid proportional divisions of a
sea venture's profit, with shares allotted by rank, only after a
voyage's successful conclusion." Muslim jurists also distinguished
between "coastal navigation, or cabotage," and voyages on the "high seas", and they also made shippers
"liable for freight in most cases
except the seizure of both a ship
and its cargo." Islamic law also "departed
from Justinian'sDigest and the Nomos Rhodion Nautikos
in condemning slave jettison", and the Islamic Qirad was
also a precursor to the European commendalimited partnership. The "Islamic
influence on the development of an international law of the sea"
can thus be discerned alongside that of the Roman influence.

There is evidence that early Islamic international law influenced
the development of Western international law, through various
routes such as the Crusades, Norman conquest of the Emirate of
Sicily, and Reconquista of al-Andalus.
In
particular, the Spanish jurist
Francisco de Vitoria, and his
successor Hugo Grotius, may have been
influenced by Islamic international law through earlier
Islamic-influenced writings such as the 1263 work Siete Partidas of Alfonso X, which was regarded as a
"monument of legal science" in Europe
at the time and was influenced by the Islamic legal treatise
Villiyet written in Islamic Spain.

Legal education

Madrasahs were the first law schools, and it is likely that the
"law schools known as Inns of Court in England" may have been
derived from the Madrasahs, which taught Islamic law and
jurisprudence.

The origins of the doctorate dates back to
the ijazat attadris wa 'l-ifttd ("license to teach and
issue legal opinions") in the medieval Islamic legal education system, which was equivalent
to the Doctor of Laws qualification
and was developed during the 9th century after the formation of the
Madh'hab legal schools. To obtain
a doctorate, a student "had to study in a guild school of law, usually four years for the basic
undergraduate course" and
ten or more years for a post-graduate course. The "doctorate
was obtained after an oral examination to determine the
originality of the candidate's theses,"
and to test the student's "ability to defend them against all
objections, in disputations set up for
the purpose," which were scholarly exercises practiced throughout
the student's "career as a graduate
student of law." After students completed their post-graduate
education, they were awarded doctorates giving them the status of
faqih (meaning "master of law"), mufti (meaning "professor of legal opinions") and mudarris (meaning
"teacher"), which were later translated into Latin as magister, professor and doctor respectively.

Democratic participation

In the early Islamic caliphate, the head of state, the caliph, had
a position based on the notion of a successor to Muhammad's political
authority, who, according to Sunnis, were ideally elected by the people or their representatives.
After the Rashidun Caliphs, later
Caliphates during the Islamic Golden Age had a lesser degree of
democratic participation, but since "no one was superior to anyone
else except on the basis of piety and virtue" in Islam, and
following the example of Muhammad, later Islamic rulers often held
public consultations with the
people in their affairs.

The power of the Caliph (or later, the Sultan) was restricted by
the scholarly class, the ulema, a group regarded as the
guardians of the law. Since the law came from the legal scholars,
this prevented the Caliph from dictating legal results. Laws were
decided based on the ijma (consensus) of the Ummah
(community), which was most often represented by the legal
scholars. In order to qualify as a legal scholar, it was required
that they obtain a doctorate known as the ijazat attadris wa 'l-ifttd ("license to teach
and issue legal opinions") from a Madrasah. In many ways,
classical Islamic law functioned like a constitutional law.

Count Leon Ostorog, a French jurist, wrote the following on
classical Islamic law in 1927:

Inalienable rights

The concept of inalienable rights was found in early Islamic law
and jurisprudence, which denied a ruler "the right to take away
from his subjects certain rights which inhere in his or her person
as a human being." Islamic rulers could not take away certain
rights from their subjects on the basis that "they become rights by
reason of the fact that they are given to a subject by a law and
from a source which no ruler can question or alter." Islamic
jurists also anticipated the concept of the rule of law, the equal subjection of all classes
to the ordinary law of the land, where no person is above the law
and where officials and private citizens are under a duty to obey
the same law. A qadi (Islamic judge) was also
not allowed to discriminate on the grounds of religion, race,
colour, kinship or prejudice. There were
also a number of cases where caliphs had to appear before judges as
they prepared to take their verdict. There is evidence that
John Locke's formulation of inalienable
rights and conditional rulership, which were present in Islamic law
centuries earlier, may have also been influenced by Islamic law,
through his attendance of lectures given by Edward Pococke, a professor of Islamic studies.

Women's rights

Status of women under Islamic law prior to the 19th
century

Until the 19th century, Islamic law granted women some legal rights
that they did not have under Western legal systems until the 19th
and 20th centuries. For example, "French married women, unlike
their Muslim sisters, suffered from restrictions on their legal
capacity which were removed only in 1965." Noah Feldman, a Harvard University law professor, notes:

Women also had the right to challenge or oppose any laws proposed
by a Caliph. In the 7th century, when the
Caliph Umar proposed a change in Islamic marital jurisprudence
at a mosque, he was challenged by an old
unknown woman who stated: "You shall not deprive us [women] of what
God gave us." The woman cited a passage from the Qur'an as support and thus Umar had no choice but to
declare: "The woman is right and the Khalifah is wrong." At the
time of the Prophet Muhammad, he often
sought advice from women in regards to political matters, and a
delegation of Arab women once "extended the
bay'ah to him," thus establishing
"the right of Muslim women to participate in the political
process."

Status of women under Islamic law since the 19th century

Of course, since this point in history the aforementioned
exploration of freedom is no longer true — that is to say that
whilst it is arguable that women had more extensive legal rights
under Islamic law than they did under Western legal systems in the
past, it is no longer true today.

Welfare and pension

The concepts of welfare and
pension were introduced in early Islamic law
as forms of Zakat (charity), one of
the Five Pillars of Islam,
since the time of the Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur in the 8th century. The taxes (including
Zakat and Jizya) collected
in the treasury of an Islamic government
was used to provide income for the needy, including the poor,
elderly, orphans, widows, and the disabled. According to the
Islamic jurist Al-Ghazali (Algazel,
1058-1111), the government was also expected to store up food
supplies in every region in case a disaster
or famine occurs. The caliphate was thus one
of the earliest welfare states.

Freedom of speech

During the Islamic Golden Age, there was an early emphasis on
freedom of speech in the Islamic
caliphate. This was first declared by the Caliph Umar in the 7th century. Later during the Abbasid
period, freedom of speech was also declared by al-Hashimi, a cousin
of caliph Al-Ma'mun (786–833), in the
following letter to a religious opponent:

According to George Makdisi and Hugh Goddard, "the idea of academic freedom" in universities was "modelled on Islamic custom" as
practiced in the medieval Madrasah system
from the 9th century.

Peace and justice

As in other Abrahamic religions,
peace is a basic concept of Islam. The Arabic term "Islam" itself
(إسلام) is usually translated as "submission"; submission of
desires to the will of God. It comes from the term aslama,
which means "to surrender" or "resign oneself". The Arabic word
salaam (سلام) ("peace") has the same root as the word Islam. One Islamic
interpretation is that individual personal peace is attained by
utterly submitting to Allah. The greeting
"As-Salamu Alaykum", favoured by
Muslims, has the literal meaning "Peace be with you". Muhammad is
reported to have said once, "Mankind are the dependents, or family
of God, and the most beloved of them to God are those who are the
most excellent to His dependents." "Not one of you believes until
he loves for his brother what he loves for himself." Great Muslim
scholars of prophetic tradition such as Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani and Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi have
said that the words 'his brother' mean any person irrespective of
faith.

However this view regarding "Universal Brotherhood" is not held by
all scholars as it states in the Quran:

The Believers are but a single Brotherhood
.

Neither was it a view of the prophet Muhammad who said:

A Muslim is the brother of another Muslim.

He does not oppress him, nor does he leave him at the
mercy of others."

[Sahih Muslim]

Slavery and emancipation

The major juristic schools of Islam have traditionally accepted the
institution of slavery. However, Islam has prescribed five ways to
free slaves, has severely chastised those who enslave free people,
and regulated the slave trade. The source of slaves was restricted
to war in preference to killing whole tribes en masse, as was the
tradition at the time. Slaves also had more rights under Islam as
an owner could not mistreat them. Many slaves were freed after
certain period of time, if they accepted to convert to Islam, or if
they were ransomed.

Sharia and non-Muslims

Sharia attributes different legal rights to different groups.
Sharia distinguishes between men and women, as well as between
Muslims, "people of the Book"
such as Jews and Christians and other non-Muslims.

Under 'Sharia' law non-Muslims must pay tax called Jizya if they want to live safely in Muslim states,
otherwise the state refuses to protect them, even though it
protects the Muslim citizens. Recently a minority community of Sikhs was forced to pay Jijia to live safely in a
Pakistani region controlled by Taliban.

Under Sharia a non-Muslim is worth half that of a Muslim (see
Diyya) under certain circumstances; however,
the dominant school of thought—the Hanafi school—is of the opinion
that a non-Muslim is equal to a Muslim in worth in terms of
Diyya.

Qanun

After the fall of the Abbasids in 1258, a practice known to the
Turks and Mongols transformed itself into Qanun, which gave power to caliphs, governors, and sultans alike to "make their own
regulations for activities not addressed by the sharia." The Qanun
began to unfold as early as Umar I (586-644 CE). Many of the
regulations covered by Qanun were based on financial matters or tax
systems adapted through the law and regulations of those
territories Islam conquered. Qanun in Arabic means law or
rules.

Modern Islamic law

During the 19th century, the history of Islamic law took a sharp
turn due to new challenges the Muslim
world faced: the West had risen to a global power and colonized
a large part of the world, including Muslim territories. In the
Western world, societies changed from the agricultural to the
industrial stage, new social and political ideas emerged, and
social models slowly shifted from hierarchical towards egalitarian.
The Ottoman Empire and the rest of
the Muslim world were in decline, and calls for reform became
louder. In Muslim countries, codified state law started replacing
the role of scholarly legal opinion. Western countries sometimes
inspired, sometimes pressured, and sometimes forced Muslim states
to change their laws. Secularist movements pushed for laws
deviating from the opinions of the Islamic legal scholars. Islamic
legal scholarship remained the sole authority for guidance in
matters of rituals, worship, and spirituality, while they lost
authority to the state in other areas. The Muslim community became
divided into groups reacting differently to the change. This
division persists until the present day (Brown 1996, Hallaq 2001,
Ramadan 2005, Aslan 2006, Safi 2003, Nenezich 2006).

Secularists believe that the law of the state
should be based on secular principles, not on Islamic legal
theory.

Traditionalists believe that the law of the
state should be based on the traditional legal schools. However,
traditional legal views are considered unacceptable by some modern
Muslims, especially in areas like women's rights or slavery.

Reformers believe that new Islamic legal
theories can produce modernized Islamic law and lead to acceptable
opinions in areas such as women's rights. However, traditionalists
believe that any departure from the legal teachings of the Qur'an
as explained by the Prophet Muhammad and put into practice by him
is an alien concept that cannot properly be attributed to
"Islam".

Background

According to Noah Feldman, a law professor at Harvard University,
the legal scholars and jurists who once upheld the rule of law were
replaced by a law governed by the state due to the codification of Sharia by the Ottoman
Empire in the early 19th century:

Contemporary practice

There is tremendous variety in the interpretation and
implementation of Islamic Law in Muslim societies today. Liberal movements within
Islam have questioned the relevance and applicability of
sharia from a variety of perspectives; Islamic feminism brings multiple points of
view to the discussion. Some of the largest Muslim countries,
including Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, have largely secular constitutions and laws, with
only a few Islamic Law provisions in family law.Turkey has a
constitution that is officially strongly secular.India and the
Philippines are the only countries in the world that have
separate Muslim civil laws, wholly based on Sharia. In
India, Muslim civil laws are framed by the Muslim Personal Law
board while in the Philippines, it is framed by the Code of
Muslim Personal Laws. However, the criminal laws in both the
countries are uniform.

In
September 2008, certain newspapers in the United Kingdom sensationally alleged that the government had
"quietly sanctioned" the recognition of Sharia courts.
However, this is not really a submission to Sharia law but applies
to situations where both sides in a legal dispute freely choose a
Sharia court as a binding arbitrator rather than taking a matter
before the official courts. The decision does not break new ground.
The decisions of similar Jewish beth din
court arbitations have been recognized in England for over 100
years. Neither party can be forced into arbitration by a Sharia or
a Jewish court.

Most countries of the Middle East and North Africa maintain a
dual system of secular
courts and religious courts, in which the religious courts mainly
regulate marriage and inheritance. Saudi Arabia and Iran maintain
religious courts for all aspects of jurisprudence, and the Mutaween (religious police) assert social
compliance.Laws derived from sharia are also
applied in Afghanistan, Libya and Sudan.Sharia
law is officially recognised by the justice system in Israel in matters
of personal status of Muslims (e.g. marriage, divorce,
guardianship.) Judges' salaries are paid by the state.Some
states in northern Nigeria have reintroduced
Sharia courts. In practice the new Sharia
courts in Nigeria have most often meant the re-introduction of
harsh punishments without respecting the much tougher rules of
evidence and testimony. The punishments include amputation of one/both hands for theft and
stoning for adultery
and apostasy.

Many,
including the European Court of Human
Rights, consider the punishments prescribed by Sharia in
some countries to be barbaric and cruel. Islamic scholars
argue that, if implemented properly, the punishments serve as a
deterrent to crime. In international media, practices by countries
applying Islamic law have fallen under considerable criticism at
times. This is particularly the case when the sentence carried out
is seen to greatly tilt away from established standards of
international human rights. This is true for the application of the
death penalty for the crimes of adultery, blasphemy, apostasy and
homosexuality, amputations for the crime of theft, and flogging for fornication or public intoxication.

A
bill proposed by lawmakers in
the Indonesian province of Aceh would
implement Sharia law for all non-Muslims, the armed forces and law
enforcement officers, a local police official has announced.
The news comes two months after the Deutsche Presse-Agentur warned of
"Taliban-style Islamic police terrorizing
Indonesia's Aceh".

The interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence varies in different
modern nations. In the English-speaking world and in Islamic
countries with a history of British
rule, for example, Islamic finance has been relatively
successful due to the common-law nature of Islamic jurisprudence
being compatible with English common law. On the other hand,
Islamic finance has been relatively unsuccessful in certain
regimes such as Iran, Pakistan and Sudan
which, according to Lawrence Rosen and Mahmoud A. El-Gamal, have
diverged from the common-law nature of Islamic jurisprudence and
instead interpret "a common-law variant as if it were a civil law
system." For example, modern Iranian law is based on an "Islamic
civil code" influenced by the Napoleonic
code and German civil
code. According to the Archbishop of CanterburyRowan Williams, "In some of the ways it has
been codified and practised across the world, it has been appalling
and applied to women in places like Saudi Arabia, it is
grim."

Another significant difference between the classical and modern
systems of Islamic law is that classical Islamic law was
"independent of any state
mechanism", while modern Islamic law is "controlled by the state
because the state often controls the legal scholars." According to
Sameer S. Vohra, "This control mechanism results in a lack of the
sort of pluralism that once made the
Islamic legal system as innovative and fluid as its United States
counterpart."

Contemporary issues

Democracy and human rights

Some democrats and several official institutions in democratic
countries (as the European Court of Human Rights) argue that Sharia
is incompatible with a democratic state. These incompatibilities
have been clarified in several legal disputes.

In 1998
the Constitutional Court of
Turkey banned and dissolved Turkey's Refah Party on the grounds that the "rules of
sharia", which Refah sought to introduce, "were incompatible with
the democratic regime," stating that "Democracy is the antithesis
of sharia." On appeal by Refah the European Court of Human
Rights determined that "sharia is incompatible with the fundamental
principles of democracy". Refah's sharia based notion of a
"plurality of legal systems, grounded on religion" was ruled to
contravene the European Convention for the
Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It was
determined that it would "do away with the State's role as the
guarantor of individual rights and freedoms" and "infringe the
principle of non-discrimination between individuals as regards
their enjoyment of public freedoms, which is one of the fundamental
principles of democracy". It was further ruled that, according to
Christian Moe:

On the other side, legal scholar L. Ali Khan concludes "that
constitutional orders founded on the principles of Sharia are fully
compatible with democracy, provided that religious minorities are
protected and the incumbent Islamic leadership remains committed to
the right to recall". However, Christian Pippan argues, that this
contradicts the political reality in most Islamic states. "While
constitutional arrangements to ensure that political authority is
exercised within the boundaries of Sharia vary greatly among those
nations", most existing models of political Islam have so far
grossly failed to accept any meaningful political competition of
the kind that Khan himself has identified as essential for even a
limited conception of democracy. Khan, writes Pippan, dismisses
verdicts as from the European Court of Human Rights or the Turkish
Constitutional Court "as an expression of purely national or
regional preferences."

Several major, predominantly Muslim countries criticized the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) for its perceived
failure to take into account the cultural and religious context of
non-Western countries. Iran claimed
that the UDHR was a "a secular
understanding of the Judeo-Christian
tradition", which could not be implemented by Muslims without
trespassing the Islamic law. Therefore the Organisation of the
Islamic Conference, a group representing all Muslim majority
nations, adopted the Cairo Declaration on
Human Rights in Islam, which diverges from the UDHR
substantially, affirming Sharia as the sole source of human rights.
This declaration was severely criticized by the International Commission of
Jurists for allegedly gravely threatening the inter-cultural
consensus, introducing intolerable discrimination against
non-Muslims and women, restricting fundamental rights and freedoms,
and attacking the integrity and dignity of the human being.

Freedom of speech

Qadi 'Iyad ibn Musa al-Yahsubi argues that Sharia does not allow
freedom of speech on such matters as criticism of Muhammad and that such
criticism is considered
blasphemy against Muhammad. He
writes:

Women

In terms of religious obligations, such as certain elements of
prayer, payment of zakat, observance of the Ramadan fast and pilgrimage, women are treated no
differently from men. There are, however, some exceptions made in
the case of prayers and fasting. They are also forbidden to perform
salah (prayer) during menstruation.

Islam has no clergy, but women do not
traditionally become Imams or lead prayer. In
practice, it is much more common for men to be scholars than women.
Early Muslim scholars such as Abū Ḥanīfa and Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari
held that there is nothing wrong with women holding a post as
responsible as that of judge. Islam does not prohibit women from
working, as it says "Treat your women well and be kind to them for
they are your partners and committed helpers." Married women may
seek employment although it is often thought in patriarchal societies that the woman's role as a
wife and mother should have first priority.

Islam unequivocally allows both single and married women to own
property in their own right. Islam grants to women the right to
inherit property, in contrast with some cultures where women
themselves are considered chattels that can be inherited. (See
widow inheritance.) However, a
woman's inheritance is different from a man's, both in quantity and
attached obligations. For instance, a daughter's inheritance is
half that of her brothers, Sharia law requires family members
females or males to support each other as needed; compare female inheritance in Salic
law.

In practice Sharia law has sometimes resulted in women living in
fear or disadvantage. In instances of rape some authorities of
Sharia law require for an allegation to be validated, victims must
have four Muslim-Male witnesses to the crime or else the victims
risk being charged with fornication or adultery. In Yemen, Sharia
law required compensation to be paid to the husband in the case of
a 10 year old child bride who
requested a divorce after rape and abuse (the minimum age of
marriage under Sharia law is sexual
maturation).

Islamic jurists have traditionally held that Muslim women may only
enter into marriage with Muslim men, although some contemporary
jurists question the basis of this restriction. On the other hand,
the Qur'an explicitly allows Muslim men to marry any woman of the
People of the Book, a term that includes Jews, Sabians, and Christians.
However, fiqh law has held that it is mukrah (reprehensible) for a
Muslim man to marry a non-Muslim woman in a non-Muslim
country.

Sunni Islamic law allows husbands to divorce
their wives by just saying talaq ("I
divorce you") three times. In 2003 a Malaysian court ruled that, under Sharia law, a man may
divorce his wife via text messaging
as long as the message was clear and unequivocal. The
divorced wife always keeps her dowry from when
she was married, and is given child
support until the age of weaning. The mother is usually granted
custody of the child. The divorced wife also receives spousal support for three months after the divorce
until it can be determined whether she is pregnant.

Dietary

Islamic law does not present a comprehensive list of pure foods and
drinks. However, it prohibits:

swine, blood, meat of
dead animals and animals slaughtered in the name of someone other
than God.

slaughtering an animal in any other way except in the
prescribed manner of tazkiyah (cleansing) by taking God's
name, which involves cutting the throat of the animal and draining
the blood. Causing the animal needless pain, slaughtering with a
blunt blade or physically ripping out the esophagus is strictly
forbidden. Modern methods of slaughter like the captive boltstunning and electrocuting are also
prohibited.

The prohibition of dead meat is not applicable to fish and locusts. Also hadith
literature prohibits beasts having sharp canine teeth, birds having
claws and talons in their feet, Jallalah (animals whose
meat carries a stink in it because they feed on filth), tamed
donkeys, and any piece cut from a living animal.

Sports

Modern-day sports are permitted and encouraged in Islam providing
that it doesn't become the main focus of a Muslim's life.

The encouragement and participation of sports among both men and
women have been recorded in Hadith. The term 'sport' denotes
activities Muhammad encouraged, such as archery, swimming,
horse-riding, wrestling, etc.

Archery

Muhammad strongly encouraged the learning and practice of archery. Uqbah Bin Amir also narrates that he heard
Muhammad say: "Whoever gives up archery after having learnt it, is
not of us."

On another occasion, Muhammad once passed by a group of his
companions who were competing in archery. He encouraged them
saying, "Shoot and I am with you."

Muhammad is reported to have also said: "There is blessing in the
forelocks of horses."

Swimming

`Abd Allah ibn `Umar narrates
that Muhammad once said "Teach your sons swimming and archery and riding the horse."
This relates to the Talmudic requirement that
sons be taught how to swim and may best be understood as a
requirement to teach one's children those skills necessary to
survive and thrive.

Racing

Muhammad himself used to race his wife . Aisha said: "I raced with
the Prophet and beat him in the race. Later when I had put on some
weight, we raced again and he won. Then the Prophet said, 'This
cancels that', referring to the previous occasion."

Games of chance/card playing

Muhammad is reported to have said: "He who plays with dice is like
the one who handles the flesh and blood of swine."

Abd-Allah ibn Amr reported that
Muhammad prohibited all games of chance and card playing that
caused financial gain or loss.

Marriage and divorce

There are two types of marriage mentioned in the Qur'an:
nikah and nikah mut‘ah. The first is more
common; it aims to be permanent, but can be terminated by the
husband in the talaq process
or by the wife seeking divorce. In nikah the couples
inherit from each other. A legal contract is signed when entering
the marriage. The husband must pay for the wife's expenses. In
Sunni jurisprudence, the contract is void if there is a determined
divorce date in the nikah, whereas, in Shia jurisprudence,
nikah contracts with determined divorce dates are
transformed in nikah mut'ah. For the contract to be valid
there must be two witnesses under Sunni jurisprudence. There is no
witness requirement for Shia contracts.

Nikah mut'ah is considered haraam (forbidden) by Sunni Muslims. It means
"marriage for pleasure". Under Shia jurisprudence a nikah
mut'ah is the second form of marriage recognized by the Shia.
It is a fixed term marriage, which is a marriage with a
preset duration, after which the marriage is automatically
dissolved. There is controversy about the Islamic legality of this
type of marriage, since Sunnis believe it was abrogated by
Muhammad, while Shias believe it was forbidden by Umar and hence that ban may be ignored since Umar had
no authority to do so. The Qur'an itself doesn't mention any
cancellation of the institution. Nikah mut'ah sometimes
has a preset time period to the marriage, traditionally the couple
do not inherit from each other, the man usually is not responsible
for the economic welfare of the woman, and she usually may leave
her home at her own discretion. Nikah mut'ah also does not
count towards a maximum of wives (four according to the Qur'an).
The woman still is given her mahr, and
the woman must still observe the iddah, a period of four months at the end of the
marriage where she is not permitted to remarry in the case she may
have become pregnant before the divorce took place. This maintains
the proper lineage of children.

Requirements for Islamic Marriages:

These are guidelines; Islamic law on divorce is different
depending on the school of thought.

The man who is not currently a fornicator can only marry a
woman who is not currently a fornicatress or a chaste woman from
the people of the Book.

The woman who is not currently a fornicatress can only marry a
man who is not currently a fornicator.

The fornicator can only marry a fornicatress – and vice
versa.

The Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man.

The guardian may choose a suitable partner for a virgin girl,
but the girl is free to contest and has the right to say 'no'.

The guardian cannot marry the divorced woman or the widow if
she didn't ask to be married.

It is obligatory for a man to give bride
wealth (gifts) to the woman he marries – "Do not marry unless
you give your wife something that is her right."

A woman who wishes to be divorced usually needs the consent of
her husband. However, most schools allow her to obtain a divorce
without her husband's consent if she can show the judge that her
husband is impotent. If the husband consents she does not have to
pay back the dower.

Men have the right of unilateral divorce. A divorce is
effective when the man tells his wife that he is divorcing her. At
this point the husband must pay the wife the "delayed" component of
the dower.

A divorced woman of reproductive age must wait four months and
ten days before marrying again to ensure that she is not pregnant.
Her ex-husband should support her financially during this
period.

If a man divorces his wife three times, he can no longer marry
her again unless she marries another man, and if they got divorced
(only in a way that this divorce is not intended for the woman to
re-marry her first husband) the woman could re-marry her first
husband.

Several hadith urge strongly against
beating one's wife, such as: "How does anyone of you beat his wife
as he beats the stallion camel and then embrace (sleep with) her?
(Muhammad al-Bukhari, English
Translation, vol. 8, hadith 68, pp. 42-43), "I went to the Apostle
of Allah and asked him: What do you say (command) about our wives?
He replied: Give them food what you have for yourself, and clothe
them by which you clothe yourself, and do not beat them, and do not
revile them. (Sunan Abi Dawood,
Book 11, Marriage (Kitab Al-Nikah), Number 2139)". Others hadiths
do indicate that husbands have a right to discipline their wives in
a civilized manner to a certain extent:

Penalties

In accordance with the Qur'an and several hadith, theft is punished
by imprisonment or amputation of hands or feet, depending on the
number of times it was committed and depending on the item of
theft. However, before the punishment is executed two eyewitnesses
under oath must say that they saw the person stealing. If these
witnesses cannot be produced then the punishment cannot be carried
out. Witnesses must be either two men, or, if only one man can be
found, one man and two women. Several requirements are in place for
the amputation of hands, so the actual instances of this are
relatively few ; they are:

There must have been criminal intent to take private (not
common) property.

The theft must not have been the product of hunger, necessity,
or duress.

The goods stolen must: be over a minimum value, not haraam, and
not owned by the thief's family.

Goods must have been taken from custody (i.e. not in a public
place).

There must be reliable witnesses.

The punishment is carried out even if the thief repents. [said
by Muhammad]

All of these must be met under the scrutiny of judicial
authority.

In accordance with hadith, stoning to death is the penalty for
married men and women who commit adultery. In addition, there are
several conditions related to the person who commits it that must
be met. One of the difficult ones is that the punishment cannot be
enforced unless there is a confession of the person, or four male
eyewitnesses who each saw the act being committed. All of these
must be met under the scrutiny of judicial authority For unmarried
men and women, the punishment prescribed in the Qur'an and hadith
is 100 lashes.

The "four witness" standard comes from the Qur'an itself, a
revelation Muhammad announced in response to accusations of
adultery leveled at his wife, Aisha: "Why did
they not produce four witnesses? Since they produce not witnesses,
they verily are liars in the sight of Allah."

Punishments are authorized by other passages in the Qur'an and
hadiths for certain crimes (e.g., extramarital sex,
adultery), and are employed by some as rationale for extra-legal
punitive action while others disagree:

In most interpretations of Sharia, conversion by Muslims to other
religions, is strictly forbidden and is termed apostasy. Muslim theology equates apostasy to
treason, and in most interpretations of sharia, the penalty for
apostasy is death. During the time of Muhammad, treason and
apostasy were considered one and the same; nowadays, many scholars
differentiate between treason and apostasy, believing that the
punishment for apostasy is not death, while the punishment for
treason is death.

In many Muslim countries, the accusation of apostasy is even used
against non-conventional interpretations of the Qur'an. The severe
persecution of the famous expert in Arabic literature, Nasr Abu Zayd, is an example of this.

Insulting Muhammad or blasphemy has also
resulted in the death penalty.

Customs and behaviour

Practitioners of Islam are generally taught to follow some specific
customs in their daily lives. Most of these customs can be traced
back to Abrahamic traditions in Pre-Islamic Arabian society. Due to
Muhammad's sanction or tacit approval of such practices, these
customs are considered to be Sunnah (practices of Muhammad as part
of the religion) by the Ummah (Muslim nation). It includes customs
like:

Abstention from sexual relations during the menstrual cycle and the puerperal discharge, and ceremonial bath
after the menstrual cycle, puerperal discharge, and
Janabah (seminal/ovular discharge or sexual intercourse).

Burial rituals include funeral prayer of bathed and enshrouded
body in coffin cloth and burying it in a grave.

Rituals

Takbirs (glorifying
God) after every prayer in the days of Tashriq (Normally
these days are considered to be the ones in which pilgrims stay at Mina once they return from Muzdalifah i.e. 10th, 11th , 12th, and 13th of Dhu al-Hijjah.)

Sacrifice of unflawed, four legged grazing animal of
appropriate age after the prayer of Eid al-Adha in the days of
Tashriq.

Dress codes

The Qur'an also places a dress code upon
its followers. The rule for men has been ordained before the women:
Allah then says in the Qur'an, All those men in whose presence a
woman is not obliged to practise the dress code are known as her
mahrams. Men have a more relaxed
dress code: the body must be covered from knee to waist. However,
under (strict interpretation of) Sharia Law, women are required to
cover all of their bodies except hands and face. The rationale
given for these rules is that men and women are not to be viewed as
sexual objects. Men are
required to keep their guard up and women to protect themselves. In
theory, should either one fail, the other prevents the society from
falling into fitna (temptation
or discord).

There are many different opinions, however, as to whether the veil
or headscarf is a real Qur'anic
obligation. Reputable scholars such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi claim it
is, while others, such as Mohammed
Arkoun, Soheib Bencheikh,
Abdoldjavad Falaturi, Jamal al Banna claim it isn't. However, the
first group appears dominant: "Jamal al Banna has been for a
number of years one of the few mainstream Muslim scholars to argue
that the Muslim headscarf, or hijab, is not an Islamic
obligation."